“Duchess.”
He’s once again calling meDuchessand sounds far more coherent than he did, so I meet his gaze compliantly. There’s a shadow of trepidation behind his silvery eyes, but I can’t decipher what his expression is.
“It by no means makes up for anything,” he begins, then pauses as his throat pulses with a swallow. “But I appreciate your tending to me while I’m in such a state.”
I drop my chin low to hide its faint tremble. “I owe you far more than simply drawing you a bath.” I clear my throat and plant my palms against the cold marble floor, pushing myself to stand up. “The doctor is on his way, so I’ll give you your privacy.”
I say nothing as I turn from him to leave, but I feel the weight of his eyes lingering on me.
“Duchess,” he says again.
I pause, but don’t turn around. “Yes, sir.”
He hesitates for an extended beat. “It would do you well in your condition to rest before we take this trip.”
I nod. “Of course.”
The weight of his eyes is still heavy on me as I slip out of the en suite. And something about all of it causes a different brand of restlessness to infiltrate my veins. His reaction to the knowledge of a police report. That indecipherable look on his face. Like he knows something I don’t; even more than I already know thathe knowsand I don’t. He and Papá have a lot more knowledge about the missing time in my life than I do. They are the keepers of that information and have only given me the bits and pieces they deemed necessary for me to know. But this police report seems to have triggered Malachi, and even though the report appears to bejustabout a stolen phone… I have a feeling that once I speak to the officer, I’m finally going to understand all of this a lot better than I ever have.
And maybe that’ll help.
But just like drawing a bath for Malachi did nothing to make right any of the things I did to him, simply knowing a little more about the time missing from my life won’t wash away any of those sins.
FOURTEEN
MALACHI
Present
TWO WEEKS AFTER I completed a course of antibiotics for my random bout of flu, Isla and I arrive in New York City to meet with the police officer regarding the report she filed eleven years ago.
Apparently, outside of the British Monarchy, Americans have little to no knowledge of European royals, and it took a lengthy explanation for him to understand why I preferred to not hold this meeting in the police station. Officer James Miller finally agreed to bring the file and meet with us in the living room of the penthouse suite I’ve rented for our brief stay. And despite having recovered from the flu, I can’t shake feeling a bit sick. Notflusick. A different kind of sick. An emotional kind of sick.
The kind of sick that results from the realization that you may have made a terrible, life-altering mistake.
I’ll have to hear out Officer Miller and review the report, but the information I already have is that Isla’s phone was stolen during the same month that she sent me the string of text messages that destroyed everything. And whatexactlydoes that mean? I have no idea yet, but it seems way too coincidental. And in preparation for…God only knows what, I brought my old cell phone with me. The cell phone I keep in the vault that has the sick-as-fuck, heartless last thread of messages she sent to me before I stopped hearing from her. I don’t know why, or if I’ll need it at all, but it suddenly seems relevant.
Officer Miller is seated on a sofa across from the one I’m sharing with Isla, the coffee table in the middle holding a tea set-up in addition to a thick, slightly aged file. He hasn’t touched the tea, and he’s sitting with a stiff posture on the edge of the sofa, eyeing Isla with a poker face. I don’t know if that’s a cop thing, or if it has something to do with the fact that the file for a reported stolen cell phone is about two inches thick.
I have no idea what’s in that file, but seeing it causes all sorts of potential scenarios to churn in my mind, many of which only perpetuate the slight sick feeling I have.
Sitting affectionately close to Isla, I sip from a china tea cup and simply listen as Officer Miller offers a preface of sorts to the information in the file.
“So, you’re saying that you have some kind of mental condition that affects your memory?” he asks her. He’s asked her that question about four times already, albeit worded differently each time, and something about his redundancy is suspicious.
Isla subtly wrings her hands in her lap and then tucks a strand of her jet-black hair behind her ear. “I don’t believe it’s an actual mental condition.” She pauses nervously and casts what appears to be an automatic glance at me before turning away. “I’ve always just had a faulty memory.” She gestures at me while not looking at me. “My…husband… can tell you that all through childhood, I had a tendency to randomly forget things. Such as certain events. The reason I reached out to you about this is because I…” She swallows, cuts another quick glance at me, then looks down at her hands. “The same year I filed the insurance claim on this phone, I got into some trouble, and I don’t remember it. It was a time period of a number of months, and I don’t remember any of it.”
Officer Miller squints and draws his index finger across his graying beard. “A number of months,” he repeats.
She offers a single nod. “Yes.”
Impatience to get to the damn file already causes me to down a large swallow of my tea, set down the cup, and sit back against the sofa.
“Hmph. Interesting.” He rubs his beard again. “And have you ever received any kind of therapy or treatment for your memory loss?”
Isla’s eyes do a bewildered shift before she shakes her head. “It never occurred to me or my parents that it was serious enough to warrant therapy. It’s just a strange…tic… of sorts. I suppose.”
He cocks his head. “If you blocked out a number ofmonths,that seems pretty serious.”
